Monetate sees rapid increase in personalized web experiences

As the Internet becomes more fragmented brands are doing more things to engage consumers with relevant content; one of the newest ways to engage is through a personalized web experience. Through this, a consumer is shown content related to how they've interacted with a website in the past - past content reads, products clicked, etc.

Monetate, a leader in personalized web experiences, has now delivered over six billion experiences for retail brands like Dick's Sporting Goods and Urban Outfitters. You can watch a video clip about the platform here. I recently had the chance to talk with Blair Lyon, Vice President of Marketing with Monetate, about the platform and trends in the space.

Kristina: Monetate has created 6+billion customer experiences for clients; can you give me some highlights of what you've done?
Blair: We've seen some outstanding results to date. Here are a couple of specific examples:

• One way Urban Outfitters leverages our testing, targeting and personalization solution is to optimize its personalized product recommendations, which has resulted in a 2% lift in revenue and a 1% increase in conversion. While those might not sound like huge percentages, on an ecommerce website of Urban's size, improvements like that can translate into a six figure monthly revenue increase and many millions of dollars in incremental revenue per year.

• Earlier this year, Western wear retailer Sheplers (No. 290 in the Internet Retailer Top 500 Guide) worked with us to experiment with free shipping...After four days of testing the various shipping offers, Sheplers enjoyed a 57% increase to top line revenue and a 48% increase in new customer acquisition. Conversions increased 10% in the first test, and 6% in the second, with the free shipping offer encouraging customers who had selected items to complete their purchases. Since beginning to work with Monetate for testing earlier this year, Sheplers has seen a 3.33% increase in its overall website conversion rate.

Kristina: What impact does personalization have on ecommerce?

Blair: Creating a one-to-one customer experience contributes significantly to customers that are more highly engaged, which in turn has a direct impact on the merchant's bottom line. For example, if a website visitor receives messages that are not relevant to them - like offers for patio furniture when they are visiting from a cold climate - they are more likely to leave your site for one of your competitors. [Online] retailers can more effectively reach different segments of customers with targeted messaging and promotions tailored to each customer group (women vs. men; new customers vs. returning shoppers; etc.).